PAW-SITIVE PASSIONS
For the past decade or so, these selfless stray feeders have been keeping the bellies and hearts of Singapore’s homeless pooches full—rain or shine. We join two dedicated individuals on their stray-feeding journey.
We follow two stray dog feeders who make sure that our local canines are not left starving on the streets.
It’s clear that these stray dogs not only recognise Brenda Tay, they trust and adore her. The minute her bustling lorry rolls up the driveways of Defu Lane, they emerge from their hiding spots, tails wagging and tongues lolling, eager to receive pets from the 48-year-old housewife who also goes by the nickname Mei Mei, and more importantly, to eat her delicious homecooked food.
Mei Mei has been feeding stray dogs for the past 20 years. “I started when my first kid wasn’t even in primary school yet,” she remarks with a chuckle. Her meals of love consist of chicken meat and plain rice, devotedly packed into individual portions, all ready to be distributed. “I use about 25kg to 30kg of rice to feed over 100 dogs every day,” Mei Mei shares. “I feed them twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.”
As we tailed both Mei Mei and another feeder, Khng Lee Chew, 59, on their daily stray-feeding routines, it’s clear that they do this out of pure devotion. Lee Chew doesn’t have a vehicle, so she lugs close to 10kg worth of food and water every day up the bus as she dutifully goes to feed her stray pups. She shares: “I just want to know they’re safe and well-fed. I will stay here, rain or shine, until they eat my food.”
Mei Mei laments that feeding the strays is a thankless job. “You don’t get a salary, bonus, medical or annual leave,” she says with a sigh. “But I grew up knowing what it’s like to go hungry. You’re cold and uncomfortable, and your stomach can’t stop growling or churning. It’s agonising. That’s why I do what I do now.”
HEARTFELT MEALS
The day starts at 7.30am for Mei Mei—that’s when she wakes up to cook four batches of rice for the morning feeding. First, she washes the donated leftover chicken meat and bones, diligently picks out the pointy bits of bone and cartilage and sets the meat and bones to simmer on the stove. The flavourful broth goes into cooking the fragrant rice and the meat is mixed in once it’s cooked. Mei Mei lets it cool down before packing it into individual plastic bags—one for each pup.
As we watch Mei Mei cook up a storm in her kitchen, she jokingly points out that there’s more food for the pups than there is for humans in her two refrigerators, one of which was kindly donated by a member of the public. “Only the bottom half of one fridge is reserved for my family,” she laughs. “The rest are for the stray dogs.”
Lee Chew’s fare is simpler because she doesn’t have a steady stream of donors. “If there isn’t enough money, I will just use canned food, rice and eggs,” she shares. “This month, a kind lady donated $80, so I used that money to buy chicken and pork for the dogs.”
GOING THE EXTRA MILE
After placing the individual portions out on neat newspaper stacks out for the strays, Lee Chew retires to an abandoned bike lot nearby where she sets up a makeshift resting area, complete with umbrella, trolley and chairs to wile the time. “I need to make sure that the dogs have eaten my food,” she explains. “If they don’t, I have to keep it so rats don’t come. If they do, I clean up after them.” She leaves at 9.30pm once she’s certain the dogs have had their fill.
Because of the heavy plastic bags she carries every day, she’s gotten seven cases of trigger finger, a painful condition that locks one’s joints and requires surgery to fix. “My doctor always scolds me for ending up back at the hospital,” Lee Chew says with a chuckle.
WORTH FIGHTING FOR
“I wasn’t always like this,” Mei Mei admits, as she gestures to the piles of steaming rice in her kitchen. “I used to love being a tai tai, going out for facials and manicures, high teas, and outings with my friends.” Ironically, her passion for stray feeding started at her husband’s Chinese New
Year company dinner years back. “I was so full from eating that I went outside to take a walk and I found an uncle eating his dinner in front of a few dogs,” shares Mei Mei. “He was feeding the dogs with every alternate bite and when I went to talk to him, he told me that there were dogs that needed feeding. So I went back the next day to feed them and I haven’t stopped since.”
For Lee Chew, stray feeding is but a mere portion of her volunteer work. “I volunteer at Animal Lovers League in the mornings, and take care of my foster furkids, like Da Di here, in the afternoon,” she says, gesturing to the wheelchairridden one-year-old Singapore Special next to her. “These are the dogs that need the most love. For them, I changed my life. What’s most important is that they have warm bellies and a full heart.”
DONOR DEPENDENT
Though Mei Mei relies entirely on donations from the public, shelters like Purely Adoptions and kind donors (such as the chicken rice stall owner in Serangoon North who gifts her leftover chicken meat and bones) help to cover the cost. However, it wasn’t always this easy. “When I first began 20 years ago, I’d get maybe $10 to $20 worth of donations a month. I’d have to fork out the rest of the money from my own pocket,” she says. To feed these homeless pups, Mei Mei requires $4,000 a month while Lee Chew, whose operations are relatively smaller, needs $300 a month.
Feeding the strays isn’t just a purely altruistic cause. By gaining the canines’ trust after years of feeding, it’s easier to trap and neuter them. “It’s the most humane method to control the stray population,” explains Patrick Cher, founder of Purely Adoptions. “These strays are without homes and the stray feeders are not well-to-do, so they tend to use their hard-earned money to feed the strays. Purely Adoptions helps by ordering close to $1,500 worth of rice every month for these passionate individuals.”